The Great Teaching

Another season at seminary begins. Now in the fourth year, my class has officially become “the class of the Great Teaching (대교반),” a reference to the single sutra which comprises our curriculum for this last year at school: the Avatamsaka, or Flower Garland, Sutra. This engraved monolith at Seokjeong-sa bears the long title of the Sutra in the calligraphy of Hye Guk (“Wisdom-land”) Kun Sunim.

My class is excited to begin studying the sutra, although we have roughly 20 “gweon,” or books, of introductory commentary to get through before we enter the sutra proper sometime in the summer.

Hye Guk Kun Sunim’s calligraphy is beautiful. He’s also had “Nagarjuna’s Condensed Verses of Praise to the Avatamsaka,” a popular chant in Korea, inscribed on a circle of stones much like this one. The day we visited him, however, was many degrees below freezing in a fierce wind. I already couldn’t feel my fingers when I took this picture, so I gave up on the Verses and just got back in the car.